


when it's over (you're the start)

by onawingandaswear



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Closeted Character, Coma, Coma AU, Coming Out, F/M, Hospitalization, Ice Magic, M/M, Major Injury Recovery, Physical Disability, crossposted to tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-12 12:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11737185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/pseuds/onawingandaswear
Summary: Jack goes to sleep in Providence next to his boyfriend and wakes up in Montréal to discover he's been in a coma since 2009. Refusing to believe Samwell, Bitty, and the Falconers were all a dream, Jack tracks down the real Shitty, Lardo, Ransom, and Holster to find they’ve shared the same group hallucination for years. Now, they’re on a mission to find Bitty, the love of Jack’s non-existent life, and the only member of SMH they can’t seem to get in contact with.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally getting this moved over to Ao3! Title from 'No Light, No Light' by Florence + the Machine

Jack is only half paying attention to the specialist, he knows he should be listening, but all he’s hearing is that it wasn’t real. Samwell, his friends, his comeback, the Falconers,  _Bitty,_ none of it was real.

At first, Jack thought maybe it was the overdose, some sort of adverse chemical reaction in his brain; but the world only gets more confusing when Papa tells him he took a dirty hit his rookie season with the Penguins and didn’t get back up. 

He’s been in a hospital bed for almost seven years.

They talk about brain damage and memory loss. Atrophied muscles and fabricated memories. His father asks about experimental treatments and if Jack will ever walk again, let alone skate.

“I mean, the odds of you waking up at all were slim to none, but there’s nothing else physically wrong with you. It’s as close to a miracle as I’ve ever seen; with dedication and commitment, I believe you’ll be able to walk again without assistance within the next twelve months. It will take much longer to regain your old strength, but it’ll come, I have no doubt.”

Bob barks a laugh. “He’s still an athlete. Dedication won’t be a problem.”

He’s itching to call someone. Anyone. He wants to talk to Lardo. He needs to hear Shitty tell him how fucked up this all is. He wants to text Tater and Snowy. He wants to wake up in  _his_ bed and for Bitty to hold him and stroke his hair and say  _‘it’s going to be okay, it was just a dream’_.

He looks over at his parents, his mother unexpectedly stern, his father older and grayer than he ever remembers seeing him. They’re laser-focused on the doctor, asking questions Jack would never consider himself, and he’s waiting for this to be a joke. A terrible, awful prank, but the reveal won’t come.

His vision blurs and he can feel tears dropping onto his hands. His fingers are thin, his skin so pale it’s practically translucent. It’s disgusting.  _He’s disgusting._

This isn’t the Bob Zimmermann that took them to Mont Tremblant and spent three days teaching Bitty how to ski. This isn’t the Alicia Zimmermann who spent weeks ring shopping when he admitted just how much he really loved Eric.

These people are strangers. The same untouchable celebrities who didn’t understand just how badly Jack hated his life until he almost lost it. It took Jack struggling through rehab for Bob to really connect, for Alicia to regret being so absent. Rehab for an overdose that never happened. False memories of loving, understanding parents Jack apparently  _made up_. This Alicia Zimmermann is the woman who trained him to smile when he wanted to do anything but. This Bob Zimmermann rested a hand on his shoulder at 17 and told him to think very carefully about choosing to be attracted to men.

Jack hated them once, and he has a feeling he’ll hate them again very soon.

 

* * *

 

He has a visitor, and he doesn’t know what he was expecting when Kent shows up with an expensive floral arrangement and sad looking ‘get well soon’ balloon. Kent looks almost the same, except there’s a nice pink scar just below the cut of his jaw and his teeth have clearly been redone. It’s not an injury Jack is familiar with, and it’s yet another moment of terrible wrongness. He sees Jack staring and before even saying hello announces, “I don’t know what you’re supposed to get coma patients. I panicked.”

Jack has to course correct quickly because this isn’t the same Kenny that crashed Epikegster and threatened to out him. Jack fabricated that version of his best friend. His first love.

If Dr. Holloway is right, his only love.

“You look like shit, Zimms,” he continues, trying not to show how overwhelmed he clearly is.

 

“You trying to sweet-talk me, Parse?” Jack jokes, dredging up memories of their old banter. “‘Cause you’re doing a bang-up job of it.”

And Kenny  _laughs_ , sets the flowers on the coffee table and lets the balloon float to the ceiling before he’s wrapping Jack in a cautiously gentle hug.

“‘Bout fucking time, Zimms. Was about to give up on you,” Jack pats Kent’s back and soaks in the physical contact, if only for a moment. “You know, I brought the cup here. I hoped that maybe you’d be so pissed I took a title before you that you’d wake up and kick my ass, you know?” Kent pulls back and shakes his head, looking up at the ceiling light to blink away tears.

“I don’t hate you,” Jack says before he can stop himself, and Kent gives him a sad smile.

“I know. I hate myself a little bit, though. If you’d gone first you never would have been laid out by the fucking Blue Jackets.”

“If I’d gone first the Aces wouldn’t have a cup,” Jack offers, sinking back into his pillows. “That was all you.”

Kent scoffs and rubs a hand over his face to hide his rising embarrassment. “You weren’t even fucking awake, don’t bullshit me.”

Jack laughs and twists at the thick blanket covering his lap. There’s a catheter down there somewhere and the only reason Jack hasn’t looked yet is that he doesn’t want to see how shriveled his legs are.

“I need your help, Kenny.”

“Anything.”

“I remember a whole different life, college, friends, a different team, I even had a boyfriend I was ready to come out for. His name is Eric. Was Eric. We called him Bitty.”

Kent’s expression goes pinched at the mention of a boyfriend, but he quickly waves it off when Jack notices. “It’s okay, I’ve just,” Kent hesitates, “it’s been a long time but I’m over it, you know? It sucked how things ended, and then you had to get all fucked up, but it’s okay. So you were crazy in love with this fake dude, huh? Was he hot?”

That hurts more than Jack expected it to. He looks back down at his hands and Kent curses softly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to —“

“I think it was real,” Jack interrupts, “and I need you to help me prove it.”

Kent folds his arms across his chest and Jack envies the way his biceps bulge. “Jack, I’m not here to enable your delusions. In fact, Bob gave me strict instructions not to talk to you about your coma dreams.”

“Well, you’re already doing a shitty job of that. You know better than anyone ice magic is real.”

Kent waves his hand around the room dismissively. “ _This_ isn’t ice magic. You cracked your skull open on a risky play and almost died; the only magic here was the entire fucking League praying you wouldn’t be a drooling simpleton when you woke up.  _If_  you woke up. I’m not trying to be cruel, but what happened to you wasn’t a one-off. This false memory thing is a documented condition. You know you sound like someone with amnesia saying they didn’t exist before an accident because they have no memories.”  

“You sound like my father.”

Kent drops into the chair beside Jack’s bed and sprawls his legs out, anxiously bouncing his heels. “Okay, fine. Say you had another life. And your ‘memories’ are even a tiny bit real. How can you prove it?”

Jack watches Kent for a moment, the way he worries his lip with an uneven overbite.

“You’re dating your winger, Jeff Troy,” Jack says, praying to every god he can think of that he’s right; that this is the one piece of information Jack had no way of possibly knowing. It’s everything he can do not the break down when Kent freezes and whispers,  _“How the fuck do you know that?”_

“Because I’m not insane,” Jack hisses back, just barely able to keep his voice from cracking. “Because I spent four years earning a degree at Samwell, and I played for the Providence-fucking-Falconers, and I was in love, and now I’m  _here_  and it’s all gone. Kent, you have to help me get it back.”

Kent’s eyes are red and he looks away, obviously to keep Jack from seeing him crying.

“You fucker, how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Jack laughs wetly. “You can start by getting me a phone.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kent is helpful, Jack works on getting his strength back, and the world is just a little bit different than Jack ‘remembers’.

He stops talking to the therapist about his ‘dreams’ and saves those conversations for Kent, the one person in this world that actually believes him. Turns out it pays to have a former friend-turned-lover-turned-friend who’s a multi-millionaire pro athlete because Kent comes through, smuggling him an iPhone, a tablet, and a small laptop. He even brings a hotspot so Jack’s parents won’t see an uptick in data usage.

Jack tries not to look smug when Kent hands over the tech and Jack can immediately recognize all of it. Even the new iPhone charge port.

“You’ve been asleep for like a thousand years, how do you know what a ‘lightning port’ is?”

“We went over this,” Jack says, powering on the MacBook. “I’m stuck in an alternate universe. I made a lateral transition, I didn’t travel through time.”

“Whatever. Check this out.”

Kent snags the computer back and shows him the video of the hit that should have killed him. A braced hip check that sent Jack airborne in fall 2009 and left him twitching on the ice. He plays it back twice.

“Crisse, I should be dead.”

It’s not lost on Jack this is essentially the same hit that took Bitty out freshman year. 

Kent forces a laugh. “No shit. Now that you’re awake it’s not so terrible to watch,” he says, clicking away to another window displaying Samwell University’s home page. “But before? They wouldn’t even show the replay.”

Jack plays it back and keeps an eye on the Columbus player that hit him.

“What happened to 48?”

Kent gives him a look. “What do you think happened to the guy that turned Bad Bob’s son into a vegetable?” He fusses with the volume and mutters, “Rumor has it you can still see blood on the ice at Mellon.”

“I doubt that,” Jack says, smacking Kent’s hand away from the trackpad to take over himself. He clicks back to the video and sure enough, after Jack is stretchered off the ice the entire Pens line is off the bench, barreling across the rink toward the Blue Jackets' bench. The video ends before the fight does. 

Jack frowns, ready to ask what happened and Kent’s ready with an answer before he can even get the words out.

“One of the trainers said they couldn’t find a pulse before you got taken back and Malkin overheard. The whole team thought you were dead.”

They both jump when Bob raps his knuckles on the open door and Kent shoves the laptop behind Jack. “You boys okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack scrubs at his face. “Yeah, just catching up.”

“Alright,” Bob says cautiously, looking between Jack and Kent, “don’t get too worked up. The trainer is coming by this afternoon for an evaluation, try not to let Kent distract you too badly, eh?”

Kent salutes dutifully and when Bob leaves he digs the laptop out from under the pillows.

“Okay, I’m going to take that as my sign,” Kent announces, “I took that list you gave me and handed it over to my guy—”

“Your ‘guy’?”

“It’s Vegas, everyone has a ‘guy’,” Kent defends. “Jeeze, you’re ungrateful. Whatever. He tracked down everyone he could, the PDF should be on your desktop, and I saved it to your phone and the iPad. If anything changes I’ll just send it to you, okay?”

Kent shows him where the doc is saved and Jack is struck by the realization that this is the friendship he lost when he cut Kent out of his life.

“We should never have fucked,” Jack blurts, and Kent snorts.

“You think I don’t know that? We were terrible for each other.” He hands over the laptop and adjusts the brightness even lower when Jack winces. “You’re not insane, but you are an idiot,” Kent wraps an arm around Jack’s thin shoulders and presses a kiss to the side of his head. “Now, I have to get back and win more trophies. You focus on being able to walk again and we’ll revisit ‘Operation: Free Jacky’ in a few months. Don’t get institutionalized while I’m gone.”

Jack leans into the hug and mock punches Kent in the stomach, only ‘mock’ because Jack doesn’t have the upper body strength to do anything more than push weakly at Parson’s abs.

“Get the fuck out, Kenny.”

Kent throws on his sunglasses and grabs his messenger bag, flashing a peace sign with one hand, a finger gun with the other, and repeating, “Ungrateful, Zimms.”

Jack flips him off. Or he tries to, and Kent laughs before disappearing out of sight.

The PDF Kent leaves him is a gold mine of information Jack doesn’t begin to know how to process.

Shitty is pre-law at Harvard.

Ransom is playing men’s hockey at Yale while working on a pre-med degree.

Holster is in Connecticut playing for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers.

Lardo is somehow still at Samwell University, though she did recently return from a trip abroad.

So some things haven’t changed, and yet…

Eric Bittle is starting his Junior year at the University of Georgia in Athens.

That one hurts the most, if only for those few and far between conversations where Bitty confided how thankful he was for Samwell and the boys; for a chance to be himself.

When he finds Bitty’s YouTube channel, two years removed from its last update, he spends days scouring every second of footage.

He hides his head beneath the covers and learns how to bake a chess pie for the fourth time because that’s the video where the first attempt comes out so terrible Bitty laughs until he cries.

He does strength exercises while he streams low-quality AHL games to get a glimpse of Holster. He alternates two-pound hand weights while stalking Shitty’s LinkedIn and listening to Bitty list the pros and cons of lard instead of butter. He finds Lardo’s Tumblr by accident and scrolls through her posts while his therapist massages his barely-there quads, and Jack is six months into his physical therapy when he finally watches the last video on Bitty’s channel.

He doesn’t have a good reason for saving it. Maybe motivation, maybe he just didn’t want them to end, but the update is more an apology than anything else: with a somewhat resigned Bitty explaining he’s going to take a break from social media for a little while, just until he gets settled into his courses at UGA. It’ll be a month, two at most. There are a few dozen comments questioning his disappearance, another handful wishing him a speedy recovery (whatever that means), but that’s it.

Sure enough, when he goes to double check, Bitty’s Twitter handle brings up a locked profile and there’s nothing on Instagram or Pinterest that Jack recognizes. When he calls the cell phone number under Bitty’s current address, intent on hanging up the second anyone answered, he finds a pre-recorded message informing him the number is no longer in service.

Only slightly desperate, he does the next logical thing to ground himself.

He calls Shitty Knight.


	3. Chapter 3

The first call goes to voicemail and Jack is so worked up he panics, yells, ‘ _Shitty, call me’_ and hangs up. Almost immediately Alicia’s voice floats from down the hall, “Jack? Are you alright?”

He manages to formulate some appropriate response and rests his head on the desk, misfired adrenaline already making him feel nauseous. Then his phone vibrates with an incoming call and he doesn’t hesitate to answer, “Shitty?”

“Okay, dude, where do you get off calling me _‘Shitty’_?

Hearing Shitty’s voice is such a relief he blurts, “It’s Jack.”

“…I don’t know a Jack.“

“Bradley Knight III. Your freshman year at Samwell University you stepped in a pile of dog shit after our first practice after catcalling a coed and Bayer said you had _‘shitty luck’_ , and then Johnson said you’re just a shitty human being and from then on everyone called you ‘Shitty’. But you reclaimed it because you wanted to have a reminder that you could be a better person and what better way to be humble than to be named ‘Shitty’. And you hate your father.”

“…I don’t _hate_ my father.”

Jack waits for more. For Shitty to hang up, or to yell, but they both stay quiet, breathing softly over the line. Jack stares at the clock on his desk, counting the seconds, praying Shitty remembers _something_. Anything that proves Jack really isn’t nuts. Then, “I wouldn’t happen to be speaking to a Québécois moose-fucker, would I?”

Jack breathes on a one-two count, nearly shaking with relief. “ _Crisse,_ I thought I was losing my mind, but you’re real, you’re _fucking real_.”

They’re both laughing in that deep, heady, panicky kinda way.

“Hey. Jack. Dude,” Shitty giggles, “I think I’mhaving a little bit of a fucking existential crisis right now, so I’m going to need you to talk me down because I know I’m talking to you but —” He cuts off with a tense ‘ _fuck me, bro’._

Jack rallies, fighting through his own emotional upheaval to coach Shitty through what he absolutely knows is a panic attack.

And of course, “Jack? Who are you talking to?”

He can’t say ‘a friend’ because he doesn’t have any of those. He covers the receiver and yells that he’s talking to Kent, and his mother doesn’t say anything else about it.

Shitty has recovered enough to yell through the line, “ _I’m real_? I’m the one that’s been dreaming about being best friends with a fucking comatose hockey player for years, I thought I was fucking nuts!”

Jack braces his phone between his ear and shoulder and maneuvers his walker across the room so he can sit near the window. “Shits, listen, something crazy is going on and we need to figure it out. I have a theory this is some kind of ice magic —“

“Whoa, whoa, hold your horses, Jackie O,” Shitty interrupts. “Where are you?”

“Montréal. With my parents. I can’t drive but I think we can track everyone down and I need help.”

“Jack,” Shitty drawls, “light of my life, the fire of my loins, my heretofore imaginary best friend, are you asking if I will abscond with you to restore the balance of the universe?”

Jack contemplates his parents, his physical therapist, being locked in this house waiting for 60 Minutes or ESPN to show up and film a segment to show the world, 'Look, Jack Zimmermann's alive, he'll never skate again and he looks terrible, but everyone, please, be supportive.' Jack doesn’t fight the grin that makes his cheeks ache. “Shitty. Will you kidnap me for an epic, possibly illegal adventure.”

There’s silence on the end of the line for far longer than Jack would like, but then a watery “ _Yes, yes, a thousand times yes_. Fuck it. Fuck my father and this fucking school, my best friend needs me and it’d be a goddamn Shakespearean tragedy if I missed the adventure of a lifetime over a group presentation."

"Thank you, Shits, you don't know what this means to me. How soon can you get here?"  

 

* * *

 

 

He tells Kent his plan because there is literally no one else in his world that gives a flying fuck about the life he lost.

"Your big plan is tracking down these people and forcing them to remember you?"

"It worked on Shitty, so if you have a better idea I'd love to hear it." 

Kent snorts a breathy, _'no_ ', and Jack spears a particularly soggy french fry. Tonight's the first night he's been allowed to have fried foods, and he's taken full advantage of it. Chicken tenders and poutine. "I'm still a bit amazed it worked," Jack admits.

"It's proof you're not nuts," Kent agrees. "That's something worth celebrating."

"Now I just have to figure out why my life is fucked, that should be easy enough."

"Have you considered talking to any Falconers to see if they remember you?"

Jack's gaze flicks to a glamour shot on the living room wall of not-Jack in a Penguins jersey. "I'm hesitant to open that door just yet. I feel like talking to the wrong person might lead to trouble. I'll stick with a Samwell control group for now. And you."

"Well, call me if you get into any hot water."

"You know I will." 

 

* * *

 

 

They plan to leave under the cover of darkness. Which is to say Jack eats dinner, packs a bag, leaves a note for his parents, and hobbles out the door to wait for Shitty on the front porch.

Shitty is late, which is expected, but it’s unusually warm for April so Jack eases himself onto the grass and enjoys the evening air. Nearly twenty minutes pass before Jack hears the telltale creak of the security gate and a large black SUV comes rolling up the driveway. It curves around, headlights off, and Shitty pops out of the driver’s side with an excited wave.

 _“Jack,”_ he whisper-yells.

 _“Shitty,”_ Jack returns, pushing himself up on unsteady legs as Shitty comes around to help him with his bag, but there’s something _wrong_.

“You beautiful fucker —“

“Shits, your mustache.”

“What? Mustache?” Then his hands fly to his face in shock. _“My mustache.”_

Shitty doesn’t quite _cry_ as they leave Montréal but Jack can see the streetlights reflecting off his bare cheeks.

 

* * *

 

 

They’re making great time and the border is a breeze, though the guard does give Jack the hairy eyeball when he sees his outdated passport photo and ziplock bag of medication bottles.

“— My doctors are trying to ease me into technology, but I already know everything —”

“Hey.” Shitty interrupts, holding up his wrist. “What’s this.”

“— Apple Watch. Kent has been helping me where he can but he’s busy with the Aces.”

“Okay, you pass.” Shitty side-eyes him. “Kent…Parson?”

“Yeah. I’m still working on what was real and what wasn’t. He doesn’t remember anything significant so I think our troubles were mostly me.”

“This isn’t confusing at all,” Shitty mutters, pulling into the driveway.

“Have you talked to anyone else? Lardo? Ransom and Holster? Johnson?”

“Shit,” Shitty’s face goes slack like he’s been hit, and he pulls over onto the shoulder of the road too quickly for Jack’s liking. He drops his head to the steering wheel and makes a pained whine. “Jack. How the fuck did I forget Lardo? Fucking Lards, man. And my boys?”

“You said you remembered Samwell?”

“I remembered you! When you called it was like someone covered up all the wrong answers on a multiple choice test and I just fucking knew, right? But just about you! What else am I forgetting?”

Jack takes a beat to process the new information and hedges, “You remember who I was dating?”

Shitty rolls his head to the side, one eye peeking out sadly between his overly long bangs. “You’ve got a girlfriend?”

“Bitty,” Jack says softly, watching Shitty’s eyes widen.

 _“MOTHER. FUCKING. ERIC. RICHARD. BITTLE._ ” Shitty roars, rearing back and punching the wheel with each word. The horn bleats in protest with every hit and Jack has to grab his hand to make it stop.

“Stop, Shits. C’mon.”

Shitty shakes his head, breathing heavily. “I’m cool, I’m good, just, what the ever-loving fuck, dude? How could I forget Bitty? And, Jesus, _Lardo_. I loved Lardo. Love. Whatever. Where are they? Do you know already?”

“Yes and no, that’s what I need your help with.”

Jack fumbles with his phone and tries to think it all through. Shitty didn’t remember him until they spoke in person. Shitty didn’t remember any of the guys until Jack mentioned them by name.

“Kent got me a list of everyone. Last addresses, occupations, numbers—“

“So, what, you need me as a backup?"

"I don't know what people will remember. I don't know if there are triggers or phrases or if you were the exception to the rule and no one else remembers Samwell the way we do. Worst case scenario, you tell everyone I'm nuts and we bail."

 

* * *

 

They’re fifteen miles outside Burlington, Vermont when Shitty says, “We should pick up Lardo first. I know we’ll need to double-back for Ransom and Holster but I want to see her. I need to know if she’s okay.”

Jack’s half asleep after his latest round of meds but he wouldn’t argue even if he was fully awake. “I know how you feel,” he mumbles, adjusting the hoodie he’s been using as a makeshift blanket. The next time he wakes up, Lardo’s in the driver’s seat, Shitty’s napping in the back, and they’re almost to New Haven.

“S’up, Jack,” she whispers, not taking her eyes off the road. “Shitty told me everything. Tough break, but don’t worry, I think we can fix this.Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when we get in.”

“…Missed you, Lards.”

“Missed you too, you big Canadian Moose.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang tracks down Ransom and Holster. Jack learns a little more about the differences between this world and his own.

“You know you’re on Facebook?” Lardo asks when they stop for gas, showing Jack her phone screen. Sure enough, it’s his account, locked, but his. “You remember your password? Maybe there’s something you missed.”

He plays around with the login info, praying the Jack that made to the NHL didn’t feel the need to change his password.

He scrolls through the scant few posts, a few pictures, a thank you for all the support, excitement about playing for the Penguins. About a hundred timeline posts from friends and family wishing him a speedy recovery in the days after the accident. It’s odd to see the messages stop after about three weeks, clearly the point at which people realized he wasn't going to get better. 

“Just a little humbling, eh?” he jokes, Lardo steals back the phone and reads through the messages herself.

“You okay? With all of this?”

He shakes his head and leans back into the seat while they wait for Shitty to return with snacks. “Why would I be? My life is in ruins, my parents think I’m nuts, I look like —”

“You’ve been in a coma for six years?”

“Yeah, that.”

Lardo hums with sympathy and squeezes his shoulder with her free hand. Then, “Hey, did you by chance check your filtered message requests?”

“No. In my experience, there’s never anything good in that tab.”

She shoves the phone back in his face. “Well, you’re half right.”

There’s a ton of spam messages but sandwiched there in the middle, between a sex cam notification and a fan praying for his recovery, is a two-year-old request from one  _Eric Richard Bittle_.

“—Jack I grabbed a ginger ale for your stomach,” Shitty wrestles into the driver’s seat with an armful of sodas and finds them huddled over the small screen. “What’d I miss?”

 

**Eric Richard Bittle**

_I don’t want you to worry. You don’t need this. You don’t need me. I’m sorry._

 

The rest of the drive to New Haven is an awkward mess of half-finished thoughts and depressing conversations.

“Well, maybe,” Shitty says, then stops with a sigh. “He could have…?”

“I think we’re just going to have to be alright with not knowing for a little while,” Lardo offers after Jack’s scrolled through the messages for the hundredth time.

The screen goes black with an incoming call from a familiar number for the fifth time. Kent must have spilled the beans. He ignores it, texts back a quick: _I’m fine. Safe. With friends. Don’t worry._ Almost immediately he gets a response: _Jack answer your phone right now_

“He knows who I am,” Jack mutters, switching to ‘Do Not Disturb'. “Which means he remembers me. Us.”

Shitty taps out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel.

“Bro, I had dreams about you long before you called me up. I _knew_ who you were, but I didn’t _know you_. And, not for nothing, I was on antipsychotics freshman year because I told my therapist about remembering this whole second life.”

Jack looks up to see that Shitty won’t meet his eyes.

“It’s not a big deal or whatever but this isn’t normal, you know? Like, you just woke up, you didn’t live the difference but we did. I’m remembering six years of a different life in bits and pieces with very little context. Every time you talk about someone it’s like another puzzle piece falling into place and I still don’t know what the final product is supposed to be. It’s basically the reverse of when Stalin offed someone and he’d remove them from fucking state photos. So, I’m just saying, Bitty wasn’t in a coma. He was off living his own life and probably getting bombarded by memories of a life at the same time, one where he had us.”

Lardo snags the bag of Chex Mix sitting on the center console, and Jack watches her pick out the rye bagel chips. All of them.

“Bitty went to Samwell,” she admits before throwing the handful into her mouth.

Jack’s mind goes blank. “Wait. What?”

“I never met him. I’d bailed on being team manager after freshman year —though I’ll be damned if I can remember why — but I heard about a freshman with contact issues that lost his scholarship. So, I’m guessing that was Bitty. He must have gone home and enrolled at UGA.”

“So, okay, a point of order? Bitty loses his scholarship while probably remembering a life where he had you to help coach him through the same checking fear that cost him his scholarship in the first place?” Shitty laments. "Can't speak for Bits, but that would have fucked me up pretty badly.”

They spend the next few minutes sitting in silence until Lardo thumbs on the radio.

 

* * *

 

They don't need to search the campus too hard for Ransom. 

When they find him in the library, Jack is halfway-through his introduction when Justin looks up to find the three of them hovering, casts a critical eye at Jack, pulls off his (noise-canceling) headphones and says, “You’re Jack Zimmermann.”

“Euh, yeah?”

“Dude, you look great for being comatose as long as you were. Glad to see you up and around.”

Then he pops his headphones back on and returns to his reading.

“Wow,” Shitty says. “Maybe we should have tried for Holster first.”

Lardo reaches out and taps Justin on the shoulder.

“Yo.”

Justin sighs and mouths _‘what?’._

Lardo pushes the headphones off his right ear and asks, “1000 roaches or a man in the attic?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Would you rather find a thousand roaches in your attic or a human person?”

“What kind of question is that? Who wants a thousand cockroaches in their house? That’s horrifying.”

Jack realizes what she’s doing and adds, “If you have roaches you can just hire an exterminator. It’s not that big a deal.”

Justin sets his book aside, pulls off his headphones completely and turns in his chair to face Jack directly. “Are you insane? You don’t live in an attic! You can reason with a person, you can’t talk your way out of an infestation. I know you’ve seen Creepshow, man, C'mon—” Ransom blinks, looks from Shitty, to Lardo, to Jack, and breathes, _‘Holy shit.’_

“There he is!” Shitty crows, turning several heads and earning a _‘shhhhhhh’_. “Missed you, brah!”

Ransom looks about two steps from a panic attack and Jack rushes, “Hey, listen, we can explain later but we’re on a bit of a universe-righting road trip and we need to find Holster, you in?”

Ransom nods slowly, after a tense moment, and in between helping his clean his table, Rans whispers, “Hey, this is real, right? I’m not just dissociating?”

Shitty claps him on the back. “Rans, babe, if you’re dissociating god only knows what’s going on with the rest of us.”

 

 

* * *

 

“I’m pre-med at Yale,” Rans whispers, leaning his head against the window as Lardo peels out of the student parking lot. They may have gotten a ticket but Ransom has a packed bag and a forged doctor’s note so they’ve managed to buy him at least a few days.

“You play _hockey_ for Yale, you fucking traitor,” Shitty amends helpfully. “Are you okay? You gonna freak out again? Because Jack’s got a blanket if you go into shock.”

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Jack soothes, “but you’ll be okay. You should remember more the longer we’re together.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ransom counters. “None of this makes sense. How is this possible? None of this should be real. We find Holster and then what? Just exist with the knowledge that we’re in the wrong universe? Go about our lives with two sets of memories? Shit, I have a girlfriend.” Ransom straightens in his seat. _“Fuck!”_

Lardo watches him in the rearview mirror. “If it makes you feel better, Jack’s been in a bed for so long he’s basically Diet Zimmermann. Or Zimmermann Lite, if you’d prefer.”

“Hey,” Jack warns. “Only I can make that joke.”

“And, if you haven’t yet noticed,” Lardo continues, undeterred, “Mr. Knight is unsuitable for public consumption.”

Rans leans forward to get a clear look at Shitty’s face and laughs, “What the fuck, man? Where’s your ‘stache?”

“God only knows,” Shitty sighs, rubbing his upper lip sadly. “But I’ll have the old girl back soon.”

“We should get a fake one until then,” Ransom grins, “so I don’t keep doing double takes when I look at you. Lards, what about you? What’s different about your life?”

She hesitates, and Jack doesn’t miss the way she looks to Shitty for support. “Not much,” she says lamely, “just missing you freaks.”

Ransom bites his lip, unsure. “Uh, huh. Well, if that’s all, what do we do after we find Holster?”

“First we have to hope he remembers us. Then, if he does, we’re going after Bitty,” Jack looks out the window and catches a sign for Bridgeport. “Wait, are we here already?” 

Lardo snorts, “Dude, it’s like a thirty-minute drive. We could have taken a ferry.”

Ransom groans and flops back into his seat. “You seriously telling me I’ve been less than an hour from Holster this whole time? _Fuck this reality_.”

 

* * *

 

They end up in the parking lot of Webster Bank Arena, and Shitty turns in the passenger seat to address them. “Okay, the Sound Tigers should be having an open practice right now, and I have a plan to get us one on one with Holster.”

Jack eyes the other cars in the parking lot. “Do we need a plan? It’s the AHL, I’m not sure anyone is going to be inherently suspicious of us.”

Shitty glares half-heartedly at Jack, and he drops it.

When they get inside, close enough to the ice they can identify players, Jack’s entire body protests the cold in a way it never has before. _“Crisse de Calisse —”_ he hisses, tugging at the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

“Bro?”

Jack tries to power through, tries to be strong in front of Lardo, but he can’t do it. His joints are already starting to ache and his jaw is shaking. “I’m sorry, it’s too much.”

Ransom is already scanning the arena, when he points and yells, “There, 37!”Jack follows Ransom’s finger and sure enough, 37’s jersey says 'Birkholtz'.

“I need to get warmer,” Jack forces, leaning into Lardo.

“I gotcha, Jack,” Lardo whispers, then, turning to the boys, “We’ll find the locker room, you two get Holster back there.”

“Wait.” Shitty grabs Jack’s arm and maneuvers him to the bench, where a man who must be the Sound Tiger’s coach is already watching them warily.

“Can I help you boys?”

“We’re from Make-a-Wish. This is Jack. He has cancer and he wants to meet Adam Birkholtz. In private.”

Jack wants to protest on principle, but the man doesn’t argue, instead, he waves over another player to grab Birkholtz.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Shitty leans over to whisper in his ear. “We’re clearly not Make-a-Wish.”

“Jesus, Shitty,” Lardo slaps his hand away and starts leading Jack away from the ice. When they find the tunnel and a trainer, Jack blurts ‘Make-a-Wish, w-where’s the l-locker room?’, and the man leads them right in.

Lardo dumps him on a bench and starts rubbing his arms to warm him.

"Jack, are you okay?”

“I have n-no muscle and n-no fat, what do you think?”

“Fair.”

Ransom and Shitty are close behind, bursting in with, “He’s coming!” Then, almost on cue, the doors open behind Ransom and Adam Birkholtz is peeking in with no small measure of confusion. He catches sight of Jack and plasters on a smile.

“We’re going to hell for this,” Jack whispers.

“We’re in hell already,” Lardo hisses back.

“Hey, guys, it’s nice to meet you —” Adam starts, but Ransom is on him immediately and Birkholtz recoils slightly, “—Whoa, dude, _personal space_.”

“Holster,” Ransom says firmly. “30 Rock is a terrible show, and you should be ashamed for watching it.”

“Excuse me?” Birkholtz shakes his head roughly, like trying to get rid of a headache, “Big ol’ fuck you man! Tina Fey is a national treasure, you’re going to come in here and shit on everything I love? What did I ever do to you —” Holster stop himself, takes a steadying breath, and looks around the room, surprised, then, “Bro? Rans?” 

 _“Bro,”_ Ransom’s voice cracks, devastated, and Jack feels like there’s barely a breath between them before Holster has Ransom’s face cradled in his hands, kissing him with a ferocity he’s never seen before, like Ransom’s about to disappear forever or the world is about to end. Which in this scenario may not be entirely inaccurate.

 _“Missed you so much, how did I forget you?”_ Holster pants and Ransom laughs, knocking their foreheads together.

“It’s okay, I forgot your stupid, ugly face, too,” and then they’re back at it.

“We’re going to have to pry them apart with a crowbar,” Jack mutters, and Shitty elbows him.

“Like you’re not planning to go to town on Bitty when we find him. But yeah, totally spaced these two were boning,” Shitty stage whispers and Justin holds up a middle finger, not willing to pull away.

Jack sees a slip of tongue and coughs, “Okay guys, don’t think Adam is out here just yet.”

Holster freezes and pulls away, cheeks flushed and lips already swollen but he doesn’t let go of Ransom. When he focuses properly on Jack he balks. _“Dude._ ”

Jack fights a wince but spreads his arms wide and shrugs. “Coma. I’m over it.”

“But, buddy, your _ass_.”

He sighs, resisting the urge to look down. “I know.”

Ransom mimes the stations of the cross before slapping Holster’s arm. “We’ll need a Zimmermann Better Booty Bureau, now.”

Adam’s smile drops. “ _Better Booty Bureau_ …wait, Bitty. Where’s our sweet baker?”

“We’re still working on that,” Shitty offers, nudging Jack to sit down in an empty stall. “He’s awol. We’re going to find him, and you’re welcome to join if it doesn’t derail your career.”

Holster looks around the locker room then back at Ransom, a dopey smile on his face. “Yeah, I’m down for an Itty Bitty Rescue Mission.”

Jack’s phone buzzes in his pocket, another missed call, another set of texts from his parents. He powers it off completely.

“So, Captain,” Holster nods to Jack. “What’s the plan?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I thought I was done, but I'm not, and I don't want to wait any longer, so here are 3000 words! Hooray! (And I wrote this while travelling so if you see any glaring errors let me know so I can correct them when I get home XD)

 

“So what’s the general consensus here? Alternate universe? Fever dream? Collective hallucination?”

Jack turns up the AC and angles the vent to the back of the car. He can already smell the boys, who made no effort to shower after what he can only assume was a quickie in the gas station bathroom. Shitty grins at the subtle act and glances into the rear view mirror to meet Holster’s questioning gaze.

“We’re going with magic on this one.”

“Okay, so, good magic _or_?”

“Or what?”

“Jack was drafted but got injured and was in a fucking _coma._ I’m playing in the AHL, totally my dream, but I lost Rans. Shitty, your dad loves you but you’re a corporate douche. I mean, we all forgot each other and Bitty is just _gone,_ ” Holster frowns and looks to Ransom for support. “That sounds like a curse to me. Am I wrong?”

“Fuck, dude,” Shitty breathes. “Maybe you’re right. Were we cursed? What’s the last thing everyone remembers?”

Jack pulls at a loose thread on his blanket and tries to focus on his murky memories. He thinks about Bitty and the night before he woke up in Montreal. Lardo taps his shoulder lightly, her lips set in a firm line.

“Jack,” she says, none too gently. “You came out.”

Another piece slots into place and just like that Jack _remembers_. The fucking interview. The idiotic half-assed protests followed by the death threat. Bitty moving in permanently because Bob wanted to hire private security.

“You think someone did this on purpose?” Jack asks, already knowing the answer. Shitty makes a noise of protest but doesn’t actually follow it up with anything. Lardo grimaces.

“Put it on the list,” Ransom says. “After ‘ _we’re living in the Matrix_ ’, but before ‘ _slipped into an alternate universe_ ’.”

They’re neck deep in beltway traffic and Jack feels like he’s going to jump out of his skin. It’s somehow all the more tedious since he can’t drive himself. Or, he could, if anyone would let him.

“How far?” he asks, well aware that he could look up the distance on his phone.

“Once we get through this traffic? Maybe ten hours if we don’t stop. But, we’ll have to stop,” Shitty pipes up from the back. “There’s no way Lards can take us the whole way.”

“We can trade-off,” Ransom argues. “This isn’t a spring break road trip, this is 'save the world' kinda shit, you know?”

At that, he leans forward and cranks the radio volume until Fleetwood Mac drowns out the road noise. Jack lets himself get lost in the music, if only for a little while.

 

* * *

 

They’re outside D.C. when Jack finally checks his phone. He skims the messages from his parents, all variations of ‘ _come home_ ’, ‘ _why are you doing this_ ’, ‘ _let us help you_ ’. Blame and empathy in equal measure. He can’t concern himself with the unnecessary details of his non-life, he has a mission, a purpose, and he’s already come so far. His car is filled with people that shouldn’t exist, friends that remember him and the world he left behind. Living, breathing proof that Jack is _right_. Kent is next. A smattering of messages checking in to see if he’s okay, how the trip is going, and then: _‘Bob pulled rank on me. I’m sorry, I had to tell them. Good luck.’_ Jack doesn’t need to read between the lines.

“Kent caved. My parents know where we’re headed,” Jack sighs, powering off his phone. “Think we can beat them?”

Holster stretches and tickles the back of Lardo’s head. “Honestly?”

“No,” Jack chides. “Lie to me.”

“We will definitely make to Athens before your uber rich father can charter a jet,” Ransom says. “But realistically? You’re going to have to tell them the truth. We’re here for you, man. We’re proof that you were telling the truth, and when we find Eric…let’s just hope everything gets sorted when we find Eric.”

Jack blinks, caught off guard and turns to look at Ransom.

“Wait, who’s Eric? We’re looking for Bitty.”

The car falls silent and Shitty coughs from the backseat.

“Um, dude, Bitty? Eric Richard Bittle. Your boyfriend.”

Jack’s mouth goes dry. “Oh, right.”

Holster leans up and pokes Jack’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m just tired.”

He fights the rush of adrenaline that precedes the urge to panic. Regulates his breathing and closes his eyes trying to remember his life. The real one. And it’s not much, bits and pieces that seem to be making less coherent sense the harder he tries to focus. He could be tired. He could be cursed. He could be forgetting.

_He could be forgetting._

“We have to find Bitty,” Jack breathes, and Lardo seems to be the only one that’s heard him.

“What do you think boys? Do we need to stop? I think we can power through, take turns driving —”

Jack tunes out the rest of the conversation, scrambling for his notebook. He flips it open, goes over Kent’s list of names, finds ‘Eric Richard Bittle’, and starts writing everything that feels important. Everything he thinks he knows, words that’ll help him remember if, God, forbid, this is anything more than simple exhaustion.

_Bitty, Bits - Boyfriend_

_Short (not too short, perfect)_

_Checking_

_Blonde (?)_

_Southern: Georgia_

_Parents: Coach (?) and Suzanne_

_Pie_

_Monsieur Lapin_ _—_ _Senior Lapin_ _“SENOR BUN”_

_Soft hands_

“It’s okay,” Ransom says softly, peering over his shoulder at the list. “You’re just tired, Jack.”

“I forgot his _name,”_ Jack stresses, scratching ‘ERB’ and poorly drawn bunny face on the corner of the page. “ _His name._ ”

“I forgot him,” Ransom nods to Holster, “and I loved him. The game we’re playing right now? There aren’t rules. There’s no precedent for any of this. Give yourself some grace. We’ll figure this out and we’ll set things right. Or, as right as they can be.”

Holster bunches up a sweatshirt and hands it up to the front. “Hey, maybe try to sleep. Less time to fret if you’re unconscious, right?” Jack takes the offered jacket and bundles it between the window and his head. “I just want this to be over,” he mutters, leaning against the glass.

He falls asleep listening to Stevie Nicks, praying the face he’s recalling belongs to the love of his life.

 

* * *

 

Jack sleeps until they hit a pothole and he jerks awake to find Holster in the driver’s seat instead of Lardo. He doesn’t recognize the city, the traffic is terrible, and it’s dark.

“ _Crisse_ , how long was I out?” He grumbles, rubbing at his eyes and glancing to the back where Shitty and Lardo are curled up on the bench, Shitty snoring like a champ, and Holster’s hood is pulled down over his eyes.

Holster pulls an earbud out and says, “Bro, like, six hours, it was insane. We figured you needed it so we didn’t wake you up when we stopped for dinner. There’s a sandwich in the bag for you.”

Sure enough, there’s a plastic bag between his legs with a bag of chips and a hero sub inside.

“Where are we?”

“Just about to Charlotte. Only about four hours or so if I speed but I figured we’d get a hotel or something when we get closer and regroup. Don’t really want to ambush Bitty at four in the morning, right? Also, I have no idea where he lives, so,” Holster trails off and merges out of an exit lane. “If you want to go back to sleep, I’ve got this. I’ll wake you when we hit Georgia.”

The street lights pass so quickly he can’t track the light, and Jack can feel his eyelids getting heavy.

“Thank you, Adam,” Jack yawns, closing his eyes.

“No problem, Cap. I’ve got your back.”

 

* * *

 

The next time Jack wakes it’s to a gentle hand shaking his shoulder. He blinks against the light streaming in through the windshield and realizes he’s staring at an offensively bright motel sign.

“ _Fuck me,_ ” Jack groans, trying to cover his face.

“Yo, Zimms. C’mon, time for a real bed.”

“Are we here?”

Shitty waves from the open door of a room only a few feet from the car. “Bro, it’s three in the fucking morning. Get your skinny ass out of the car and into bed. You want to be reunited with your soulmate looking like a fucking zombie?”

Jack’s suddenly, damningly awake. They’re here. Athens. _Bitty._

Holster pulls open his door and offers and hand to help him climb out of the passenger seat, but twelve hours in a car is not what he needed, and his body is screaming at him.

“I need a fucking ice bath,” Jack winces, taking careful steps with Holster doing his best to not baby him.

“Well, can offer a luxurious stained bathtub if you need to freshen up.”

A muscle in his thigh spasms and Jack steadies himself on Adam’s arm.

“I might need some help with that,” Jack admits through clenched teeth.

Holster nods and eases him into the room, where Jack sees Shitty and Lardo have claimed a pullout couch while Ransom’s already half-asleep on one of the two double beds. Jack’s duffel is already on the empty bed, and his toiletries bag is waiting in the bathroom beside a row of pill bottles.

“You know, my mom’s a nurse,” Holster explains when he helps Jack out of his clothes because his fingers don’t want to cooperate. “She did a lot of in-home care. When I was younger I thought I might do the same, you know?” Holster talks, and talks, and talks. Deep, soothing background noise that somehow successfully distracts Jack from the reality that a teammate is helping bathe him. It’s only when he’s wrapped in a too-small towel while Holster pats down his legs that Jack finds his voice.

“You’re really good at that,” he says, shivering slightly at the draft through the bottom of the door. “Taking care of people. Me. Thank you.”

“Thanks, bro,” Holster grins and looks up from where he’s kneeling. “Maybe if this hockey stuff doesn’t work out I’ll get certified as a nurse or something. Especially if Rans sticks with the whole med school thing.” Holster moves to stand and swipes at stray water on Jack’s neck before grabbing the pair of loose sweats Jack forgot he packed. “You doing alright? Emotionally or whatever? I know this is a lot.”

It is a lot. Losing control of his body is ‘a lot’. His life dissolving before his very eyes is ‘a lot’. One of his closest friends seeing him naked and frail is ‘a lot’. But they made it to Georgia. They’re going to find Bitty, and they’re going to fix this.

That has to be enough.

“I’m not,” Jack admits, shimmying carefully into the sweats. “But I think I will be.”

 

* * *

 

In the morning they find a Waffle House for breakfast and Shitty slaps a legal pad on the table.

“There are two dozen plus residence halls and apartment complexes on or around UGA’s campus. I may have come on a little strong with Student Records so asking about 'Eric Bittle' won’t get us anywhere. I say we take turns calling the dorms and see if we can flush the fucker out.”

Jack eyes the list. “And if he’s not living on-site?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, Jackie.”

Between plates of sidepork, grits, and scrambled eggs, they take turns calling different dorms on campus trying to narrow down where, exactly, they’ll find Eric Bittle at a school boasting a student population almost five times that of Samwell.

They’re halfway through the list of dorms and only slightly losing hope when Ransom snaps his fingers rapidly at Jack, saying, “Thank you, we’ll be in touch,” before hanging up and slamming his hand on the counter. “Bro, I fucking found him! He’s an RA at Busbee Hall — Chick said he has class until eleven.

“So, what? We ambush him when he’s going back to his dorm?”

“Pretty much. Unless you have a better plan.” Jack polishes of his coffee and waves at the waitress for the check.

 

* * *

 

“This is creepy,” Lardo mutters, hunched low in her seat.

“Dude, it’s not _creepy_ ,” Shitty counters.

“It’s really fucking creepy,” she repeats, glaring over the top of her sunglasses. “We’re just sitting here, waiting for —”

“Holy shit,” Holster smacks Jack’s shoulder. “There he is.”

Sure enough, across the street at the bus stop, tucked into an oversized University of Georgia hoodie, is Bitty. But he doesn’t hold himself like Jack’s Bitty. This is Eric.  _Eric_ is the one hunched down over his phone, earbuds firmly in place, with his backpack braced between his knees. Eric is the one with floppy, artfully unkempt hair and an expression that is…Jack doesn’t know. He’s never seen that look before. Muted, maybe?

“He looks _straight_ ,” Lardo says, snapping a quick pic on her phone. “I mean, he’s a junior at the University of _Georgia_. Maybe he’s not out.”

“But Athens isn’t _that_ repressed,” Ransom adds, “it is a college town. I mean, bro was terrified before but that was _small-town_ Georgia.”

“Madison was an hour from metro Atlanta. It was a small town, but not sheltered, and Bittle still didn’t come out to his parents until almost graduation,” Jack reminds them. “He was practically living with me at that point.”

Shitty taps Jack on the shoulder. “Hey, what if he has a boyfriend down here?”

“Shitty!” Lardo snaps, sliding her sunglasses up. “Maybe not the best time?”

“I’m just saying! Maybe we need a contingency plan, like, Jack, I love you but right now you’re Steve Rogers before he became Captain America. You can’t really fight for his honor or some ‘white knight’ shit like that.”

The car falls silent as Jack considers the statement, tamping down the urge to tell Shits to fuck off, when Holster adds, “You know because he was really thin —”

“I saw the movie,” Jack snaps, and Holster holds up his hands.

“No judgment, man. Just, you were in a coma for like seven years? I’m just going to assume pop culture stuff goes over your head.”

Jack looks back out the window, at Eric, at Bits, who looks handsome and young and bright, who looks almost like Jack remembers. “I don’t want him to see me first,” he says firmly.

Shitty makes a sympathetic noise in his throat. “Dude, I didn’t mean to freak you out —”

“I don’t want him to see me like this, _first_ , okay? Ransom, or Holster, someone who looks normal, like he’s going to expect.”

“He’s going to remember you, man,” Ransom tries to soothe. “Bitty isn’t like that.”

“But what if this Eric is?” Jack counters, desperate for someone to understand what he’s feeling so he doesn’t have to verbalized how utterly worthless he feels. “I’m not the Jack Zimmermann he fell in love with, not anymore and he’s…he’s the same! He’s perfect, and I’m…this.”

No one speaks, and Jack is grateful for the silence because in that moment he realizes this might actually be it. This is his life. This body is his body. No cup wish or magic anything can fix what he is. He’ll never play hockey again. He’ll never be independently wealthy, his degree is worthless, he can barely bathe himself. Everything that made him 'Jack Zimmermann' is gone. 

“What if there’s no cure for this,” Jack breathes. “No magic, no mystery, just…this. I can’t offer him anything. Not anymore.”

When he looks up, Lardo has tears in her eyes, but before he can speak again, someone jostles his seat roughly.

“No. No, fuck that,” Holster seethes. “We did not come all this way for you to chicken out now, okay? Yes, your life sucks right now, but don’t you dare tell me that Eric Richard Bittle is happier in Athens, Georgia than he was at Samwell, than he was with you and with us. He’s the only one that gets to make that decision and I’m going to prove it.”

“Easy, man,” Ransom says. “Jack’s just processing stuff.”

“And we’re not? Bitty is right there! Right _fucking_ there! And you want to bail? No. I got this,” Holster throws open the door and hops out before anyone can stop him.

“Get back in this car!” Shitty yells, but Holster is already jogging across the intersection toward Eric.

“Yo! Bittle!”

Jack feels like he’s watching a car accident in slow motion. Eric looks up, catches sight of Holster, far from overt at 6’4”, freezes like a startled deer for one second, then two, before he shoots up, grabs his bag and _runs._

“ _Crisse_ —“ Jack gets the door open, forgetting a half-second too late that he’s not himself anymore, and his legs give out beneath him, bringing him crashing onto the pavement. “Bits! Stop!” He yells, as loud as he can manage. “It’s us!”

But Bittle doesn’t stop. He hangs a right and disappears behind the Student Union. Jack counts the seconds, prays he’ll see a blonde head pop out from behind the weathered brick but he knows he won’t. He stares at the asphalt beneath him, the dull black spread between his fingers, and he feels horribly numb. Jack fights the pressure behind his eyes and the tightness in his throat when a hand comes to rest on the small of his back.

“C’mon,” Lardo says softly. “We can catch him at Busbee, but you have to get back in the car. You have to get up.”

Jack sucks in a breath, stops fighting, and allows the tears to come. 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for emetophobia toward the end of the chapter.

_2017 - Providence_

 

_“— I can’t go home, Jack! And apparently I can’t stay here, so what do you want me to do?”_

_“I talked it over with my father and he suggested it might be safer for you to stay with them, at least until playoffs are over.”_

_“So, I’m going to run? Flee north with my tail between my legs because some degenerate sent a few pieces of hate mail?”_

_“Someone threatened to kill you.”_

_“And it’s probably just a Bruins fan trying to spook the Falconers lead scorer. Honey, we have the police, and cameras, and security. If you’re so worried I’ll buy a gun but we can’t hide from this. We’d be giving this asshole exactly what they want.”_

_“Can you stop being so damn reasonable about this? This isn’t about being brave or progressive; I’m the one about to get on a plane and I am terrified you won’t be here when I come home.”_

_“Jack, we can’t let one person stop us from living our life.”_

_“…I need you to do this for me because I need to be sure you're alive to have a life with me at all.”_

_"Jack."_

_“Please. Eric, Bits, I need to know you’ll be safe. Just until the season is over.”_

_“Don’t ask me to do this. Don’t make me leave.”_

_“...Your flight is at four-thirty. My parents are expecting you for dinner.”_

 

* * *

 

Jack has a nervous breakdown in the back of a Chevy Tahoe, hundreds of miles from home, in a reality that is all too real, with a body that won’t cooperate, surrounded by people he doesn’t actually know. His parents are coming. Eric is running scared.

“No more pity parties, Jack. Time to face the short, blonde music.” Then Shitty taps him on the shoulder and shows Jack his phone screen. It's a text from Lardo saying, _‘He’s okay, I got him. Busbee rm 412’_

 

* * *

 

Lardo’s standing in the hall, face flushed and eyes damp. “Hey, fuckers,” she forces with a half-hearted smile. “He’s in there but Jack should probably kick things off.”

The guys hang back, but Jack stops at Lardo first. “You okay?”

“Not really but I’ll get over myself. I left some stuff out when I told you about Samwell," Lardo looks up and blinks tears from her eyes. “I know this isn’t my fault but if I’d known he was telling the truth I would have tried harder. I’ve met Bitty before. He tried to tell me about all of this shit and I just thought he was nuts, you know? And then he was cut.”

Jack doesn’t know what to do with the information. “Pretty bold to think you could have kept Bittle at Samwell by yourself.”

“Did you miss the part where I just told you he remembered us?”

“No, but what can we do about it now?”

“How are you so calm?”

Jack shrugs, unsure himself. “Honestly couldn’t tell you. I feel like I’m clutching at the last threads of my own sanity and if I let go I’ll dissolve into nothingness.”

Lardo stares at him. “That’s fair, I guess.”

They lapse into silence while Jack contemplates the door behind her with a sign that says _'Eric - Resident Advisor'_ printed on the forehead of a stylized bulldog.

“He wasn’t running from me, was he?” Jack asks.

“No, Holster scared him. Bitty didn’t recognize him and by the time he figured it out, well,” she gestures behind her.

“Does he know I’m out here?”

“Probably not. I told him I was texting Shitty.”

“Neat.” Jack straightens his shirt. “How do I look?”

“Honestly?” Lardo gives him a considering once-over. “Like you left 70 lbs of muscle in a different universe. But I don’t think Bittle is going to care.”

“We can only hope, eh?”

Jack looks back at the boys, huddled close together and watching intently. Ransom makes a shooing gesture and mouths _‘go on’_.

 _“Tabarnak,"_ Jack mutters, before knocking. He hears someone curse. “ _It’s open!”_ comes a moment later. Jack pushes open the door feels particularly overexposed. If Bitty does recognize him then he’ll see how much Jack has changed. If he doesn’t know him, Jack has nothing to offer. No job, no money, and despite Shitty’s insistence to the contrary, he’s not exactly physically attractive. Not after spending over half a decade on a feeding tube.

'Samwell’s 50 Most Beautiful' is long behind him.

Jack's stress is only slightly abated when the room appears to be empty. In the brief calm, Jack tries to take it all in, absorb as much of Bitty's other life as possible when his eyes catch on the faded Penguins jersey draped across the back of a desk chair: _'ZIMMERMANN''_ plain as day across the shoulders. He reaches out to trace the 'Z' when a polite cough stops him.

"You know how hard it is to find one of those?" a voice says softly behind him. "An authentic, game-worn Jack Zimmermann jersey? It's next to impossible. I think some dumb part of me hoped it'd still smell like him." 

Jack turns slowly and finds Eric watching him intently from the bathroom. His hair is wet. His eyes are red.  

"You probably shouldn't be obsessed with a player who spends so much time on injured-reserve," Jack tosses back, watching Eric's face closely. "But I've heard good things about the coming season."

"Is that so? Maybe I'll finally have a chance to get his autograph."

Jack smiles at that. “Hey, Bits, guess I’m the one that needs to eat more protein now, eh?” 

"You son of a bitch," Bitty’s face twists up, turns a blotchy red and tears well in his eyes and Jack fumbles to get his hands out of his pockets to calm him down.

“No, no, it’s okay —” 

“I thought I made you up,” Bitty gasps, lunging at Jack to wrap him in a hug. The embrace knocks him off balanceand he stumbles back a few steps before Bits grabs the hem of his sweatshirt and hauls him upright. When Jack is stable, he wipes the tears from Bitty’s cheeks with his sleeve and waits for him to ask the question that everyone has asked thus far.  _What happened to you?_ It doesn't come. Instead Bitty moves in for another hug, this one much gentler and far more measured, and Jack relaxes into it, near tears himself when he hears a muffled, _“Sweet-pea,”_ from where Bitty’s face is buried against his chest.

“Bits,” Jack sighs, dropping his cheek to the top of Eric’s head. Bitty tucks his face against Jack’s neck, weaving himself into Jack’s personal space like there aren’t seven years and a whole fucking universe between them.

“I went to bed beside you and woke up in a hospital,” Jack breathes, nuzzling Bitty’s loose curls. In response, Eric fists his hands in Jack’s sweatshirt and pulls them tighter.

“I’ve been dreaming about you for years,” he admits, “about Samwell, the guys, _us._ ”

“This isn’t our life, Bits,” Jack says softly. “Something happened.”

There’s a brief press of lips against Jack’s throat and it doesn’t last long enough for his liking.

“I know it isn’t,” Bitty reaches into the hoodie pocket and takes Jack’s left hand, the one that gives him the most trouble, the one he keeps trying to hide because he can’t quite make it work like he wants it to. “But if that world really doesn’t exist, this is so much better than dreams, right?”

Jack tries to make his fingers bend enough to hold Bitty’s hand but it’s a struggle and when Bitty realizes what Jack is trying to do he takes the lead and laces their fingers.

“This doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No, it’s okay. Feels nice.”

Bitty squeezes gently and presses his face back to Jack’s neck.

“I went to Samwell. I did what I was supposed to do but you weren’t there and I couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t take a hit. Lord, it was so much worse than before. I didn’t have anyone looking out for me. The only person I recognized was Lardo, and she didn't —” Bitty huffs, glaring at the floor. “I found her at a party and I tried talking to her, tried to tell her who I was, and she thought I was just some shit-faced frog. Rightly so. I drank too much, partied too hard, I just kept hoping that maybe I’d fall asleep and wake up back home. Then I got cut and I knew that would be the end of it. There weren’t any memories of us in Georgia. I panicked, and I did something stupid.”

Jack squeezes tightly, expecting the worst, prepared for something awful. He thinks of handfuls of pills and too much alcohol. He thinks of razor blades and bathtubs. He thinks of Coach’s gun collection. He thinks of —

“I went to see your parents.”

Not that.

“What?” Jack pulls back. "My parents?"

“I drove across the border and tried to find you.”

“You weren’t hurt?”

“No? I mean, I was arrested for trespassing.” Bitty blinks up at him, shifting focus. “ _Boy_ , look at your cheekbones. You could slice bread with those things.”

“I know I look terrible, don’t change the subject. Your YouTube channel, you said you had to take a break, it sounded like something had happened to you.”

“First of all, not that it's any of your business but I was banned from the internet for six months as part of my sentence. Second, you’ve been here for all of five minutes and you're already sassing me? Third, you don't look terrible, you're just _thin_." Bitty pokes at Jack's stomach through the sweater. "If there's one thing in this world I can fix, it's thin." 

"Well, somebody has to," Jack can’t fight the smile tugging at his lips because between Bitty's big, bloodshot eyes and his indignant pout, Jack feels something missing click into place.This is right. This _feels_ right. “I missed you, Bits,” Jack says before Bitty can course correct. "But I'm not letting you off the hook, we're coming back to this later."

A gentle knock interrupts the moment and Jack hesitates to break the mood, but he's forgotten they're not alone.

"Lards, it's okay, they can come in."

"They?" Bitty asks, and before Jack has a chance to answer the room is filled to bursting.

“I needed some help finding you,” Jack explains, reluctantly releasing Eric so he can be mobbed by everyone else.

“Bitty, you beautiful son of a bitch!” Shitty gets his arms around Eric. "We've been looking all over for you!"

Jack waits and isn't disappointed when Bitty gasps, "Oh, Shitty, _your mustache_!"

It's a wonderful moment, one completely ruined when Jack's right knee buckles and he barely catches himself from falling on Ransom. 

"I'm alright,"  Jack placates when he notices all eyes are on him. "I just need to sit down."

"You need a fucking _wheelchair_ ," Shitty mutters, and Lardo elbows him hard in the stomach.

Eric breaks away from Holster's bear hug and drops beside Jack, sliding in close to ask, "You're not just 'thin', are you?"

"No. I'm not."

"Okay," Eric takes Jack's hand and lacing their fingers. "How 'bout you start at the beginning with what you remember, and I'll do my best to follow along."

The group spreads out across the room, Lardo and Shitty on the floor, with Jack and Bitty on the bottom bunk while Ransom and Holster lounge on the couch; the stress of the conversation eased only slightly by the confiscated liquor under the kitchenette sink. Jack talks about waking up in an unfamiliar place, he talks about PT, and Kent, tracking them all down, the trip, how most of them didn't remember anything until they met another Samwell alum. Ransom talks about sporadic, confusing dreams and Shitty echoes the experience. Lardo and Holster confirm they had nothing to even hint at a second life. Bitty trumps them all by explaining how he's been living with two sets of memories since he was eighteen and truly thought he might be going insane. He tells them about crossing the border and trying to contact Jack's parents. He tells them about the court order and UGA. By the end of it, they're all emotionally exhausted and tickling tipsy.

“So, how do we fix this? Do we fix this?” Lardo asks, playing with Shitty’s hair.

“If it’s ice magic we need to win a Cup,” Holster says lamely.

“Don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news,” Bitty looks up from his seat on the carpet, where he’s been massaging Jack’s calf muscle for the last few minutes. “Mister Lead Scorer here isn’t skating anytime soon.”

“I’m not doing much of anything anytime soon,” Jack agrees, and Bitty leans in to press a kiss against the surgery scar on Jack’s knee before going back to rubbing out a stubborn knot. “You don’t have to do that,” Jack says softly, so the others won’t hear.

“I want to,” Bitty argues, “you’re hurting and if I can help even a little bit, I want to.”

Jack doesn't like that answer.

“If we can’t fix this…you know you don’t have to stay, right? This isn’t exactly what you signed up for.”

Bitty stops and stares hard at the floor before turning up to Jack and glaring daggers.

“You really think that little of me? Of us?”

“No, I just,” Jack balks, unsure of his own motives. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I know you’re scared, but fear makes you stupid, Jack. It always has. You drove 2000 miles to track us all down and when you finally find me it stops being about getting the gang back together because now you run the risk of being rejected, right? By me? Because you’re not a brick wall of muscle anymore? Well, you’re going to have a hell of a time getting rid of me.”

"Okay."

Bitty's scowl eases. "What, really? Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Bitty shakes his head. "You're so dumb, I love you."

Jack's about to return the sentiment when the door cracks open and an unfamiliar face pops in. Bitty straightens immediately. "Jeremy. What do you need?"

“Uh, hey, Eric. There’s like, a dozen people here to see you?”

Bitty looks from the other student to his full-to-bursting dorm room. “Yes, David, I noticed.”

“No, I mean, downstairs in the lobby. A bunch of guys in suits?”

Jack fumbles for his phone — still on ‘Do Not Disturb’, and winces at the dozens of notifications, including the most recent from Kent: _I’m outranked, Bob’s got the old guard together — heads up, we’re on our way._

“You okay, man?” Shitty asks.

Jack shakes his head, “I think my dad’s here.”

"Well, fuck, the party's over boys, Lardo," Holster stands to stretch. "Look's like we have to kill Bad Bob and reset the universe."

"We can only hope it's that easy," Jack groans, letting Bitty help him upright.

Ransom and Holster take the lead as they make their way to the lobby, acting as self-appointed bodyguards, and Jack somehow knows what’s coming, even before Holster curses loudly when he catches sight of Kent Parson, waving from where he’s lounging on the ancient communal sofa. Accompanying Kent are several well-dressed men, and it takes less than half a second to recognize several of the familiar faces among their ranks.

“Holy shit, bro,” Shitty stage whispers, “is that…?”

"Yup." Jack clicks his tongue in affirmation. “Uncle Wayne, Uncle Mario, Papa,” he greets. “How did you find us?”

Kent whistles loudly and holds up a finger before Jack’s phone pings in his back pocket. “Location services, bro.”

“Parson?” Eric throws a confused look Kent’s direction.

“S’up, Bittle.” Kent returns, unconcerned. “Zimms! Hey, so, funny story, turns out you aren’t crazy after all. Someone broke reality.”

Bob steps forward and Jack has to nudge Ransom out of the way to meet him. 

"I owe you an apology, Jack. The boys set me straight but I'm sorry I didn't see it all before." Bob's gaze darts over Jack's shoulder. "Eric!"

“Hi, Bob,” Eric greets, and Jack isn’t expecting the tone of familiarity, or for his father’s concerned expression to slip into something softer when he lays eyes on Eric.

“Good to see you, son,” Bob offers with an apologetic smile. “A few years back, I'm guessing that was you?”

Jack looks down at Eric. “What is he talking about?”

“You know how I was saying I took a little road trip to find myself? Did you know your parents haven’t changed the code to their security gate in like ten years?”

“Did you break into their house?”

“Maybe don’t worry about it?” Eric stresses, refusing to look Jack in the eye.

“ _Crisse_ , kid,” Mario breathes, speaking for the first time. 

“It was a rough year,” Eric defends.

“Enough of that,” Bob announces, before slapping his palms together and rubbing his hands excitedly. “Let’s fix this.”

“If it’s cup magic, we need the cup,” Jack says.

“Exactly.”

A man Jack doesn’t recognize sets a large Pelican case on the study table and thumbs the locks open and lifting the lid before spinning the case to show them the contents. Whatever Jack was expecting, it wasn’t this.

“Dude,” Ransom breathes, “is that…?”

Bitty tugs on Jack’s sleeve. “What is that?”

“ _Fuck me,"_  Jack breathes. Bitty makes a confused noise and Jack elaborates, “The Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. Lord Stanley's original cup. The first one. The Presentation Cup is just a replica.” 

“Jack, you might be the only person who remembers fully how the world is supposed to be,” Wayne says evenly. "We need you to make this right."

“Then you know who did this?” Jack asks.

Wayne shoves his hands into his pockets and kicks out a heel. “You don’t need to worry about that, son. We have it handled.”

It’s not a satisfying answer. Whole lives were ruined because someone had a grudge, and Jack wants answers. He’s owed that much. “No, I want to know who did this. I need to know why.”

Bob looks at him and shakes his head gently. Mario won’t meet his eyes, and Wayne is just as dodgy. 

“It’s a bit of a ‘Monkey’s Paw’ situation,” Mario says finally, looking to Bob for support.

“Like a _‘careful what you wish for’_ kinda thing?” Bitty cautions. “No one meant for this?”

“An accident through and through,” Wayne answers. “Doesn’t take much, the intent behind a wish is the real drive.”

Shitty taps the edge of the cup’s case with his index finger. “Must have been some crazy fucking intent, then.”

Jack looks up from the table and finds his father watching him steadily, a downward curve to the set of his lips. Not disappointment. Sympathy. 

Realization hits Jack harder than a puck to the face.

 

* * *

 

 

_Providence - 2017_

 

_Jack can feel ice vibrating beneath his skates from the thousands of fans celebrating the Falconers first championship, and he knows any one of them could have sent those letters._ _Bitty should be here. It’s Jack’s fault he isn’t._ _The cup is a solid, grounding weight in his hands and someone gestures a camera his way, giving a direction Jack can’t hear._

_It should be the happiest moment of his life, but all he can think about is Eric, safe, far, far away from Providence. Far from crazed stalkers. Far from the Falconers’ first title. Far from Jack._

_‘I’m sorry’, he thinks of Eric, 400 miles away, and brings the trophy to his lips. ‘I just wanted you to be safe.’_

 

* * *

 

 

Jack rests a hand on the cup, feels the metal beneath his fingers, cool and unassuming, and tries to _feel_ what he wants. He wants ice beneath his feet and legs that can support his weight. He wants his family, his friends, his teammates. He wants Bitty beside him for as long as he lives. He keeps his eyes shut and hopes when he opens them he’ll be home. That’s not quite how it happens. He opens his eyes to the same scene and looks down, pulling his hand away from the cup. “So, what now?”

Mario checks his watch. “Now, we wait to see if it worked.”

There’s a soft pressure around his fingers and Jack looks down to find Bitty holding his free hand, watching the proceedings curiously. His eyes are bright, skin flushed, his face just a little rounder and his hair just a tad shorter. He’s beautiful.

“Bits?”

Eric looks up, away from the cup. "You okay, hon?"

"I love you," Jack whispers, "and I'm so sorry —"

 

* * *

 

 

Jack blinks against the bright light and hisses, rolling to tuck his face into a pillow.

“ _Bits_ ,” he groans, “ _the blinds.”_

“ _Get ‘em y’rself_ ,” comes from an equally distressed lump of bedding beside him.

Jack forces himself out of bed and nearly trips over his jeans before he finds his footing, legs aching, and fumbles for the auto-close switch, but it’s too late. He’s up. He’s aware. The blinds slide shut and Jack leans his forehead against the wall, still exhausted for no tangible reason.

“Bits, I’m up,” Jack moans, fighting the urge to crawl back into bed.

 _“…hooray…”_ Eric gives a muffled cheer, face smushed into his pillow.

“What did we do last night? I feel disgusting.”

Eric gets his arms under him and does a mock push up, lifting up, but still staring at his pillow. “I don’t remember, but I feel like I just ran a marathon,” he mutters. “Did we go out last night? What day is it?”

“I don’t — Sunday?” Jack says immediately, but when he checks his phone the screen says Tuesday. “Oh, wait.”

 _“I think I’m going to throw up,”_ Bitty groans.

Jack’s phone starts vibrating in his hand. It’s his father, calling at six in the morning.

“‘lo?”

“Jack! How was Georgia?”

“Georgia?” It takes a moment for Jack to rally his cognitive function. “We aren’t going to Madison until July,” Jack mumbles, rubbing the sand from his eyes. “Why are you calling so early? Did something happen?”

Bitty is staring at him, looking very focused on what is happening before he burps wetly and whines, “ _Lord, no._ ”

Jack covers up the mic and grabs the wastebasket beside his nightstand, “don’t puke in bed,” he cautions, and Bitty scowls, but takes the bin.

When he lifts the phone to his ear again, Bob says, “Sounds like you boys had a busy night. Tell you what, give me a call back when you’re feeling a little more like yourself, I have a story to tell you. Tell Eric I said hello.”

“ _Hi, Bob,_ ” Eric warbles weakly, now bent over the basket.

“He says hi,” Jack offers, wincing when Eric finally gives into whatever stomach distress he’s woken up to. _“Oh, bud.”_

“Ooof, been there,” Bob consoles. “Settle in. There’s nothing like a cup-wish hangover.”

Jack finds himself nodding in agreement before he actually processes what he just heard.

“Wait, what?”

 

* * *

 

[End]

**Author's Note:**

> whoacanada.tumblr.com


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